"Promise me you'll find me out there"

Sequin In A Blue Room is a coming of age story of a queer teenager who gets caught up in a recurring anonymous sex party known as The Blue Room. Drawn into the online world of sex finding apps, a sixteen year old toys with their identity under the screen name Sequin. This is quick and direct sexual discovery on demand. Experimenting is enough until Sequin is approached by a mysterious profile titled The Blue Room. A curated, strictly anonymous sex party. Once in the blue, everything changes when Sequin meets The Man from The Blue Room. They connect, the moment fleeting, but something is different for Sequin. This man is different. The party ends and Sequin loses him. With no name or details, just his memory of the night, Sequin sets out on a mission to track down the man. His search proves impossible, leaving him no choice but to find those who run The Blue Room. Sequin infiltrates their circle of trust, hunting down those who wish to remain anonymous. The online world soon clashes with teenage reality when those being hunted come looking for the hunter. 

Cowritten by Jory Anast and Samuel Van Grinsven, Sequin In A Blue Room is an independent Australian feature film and one of the graduate pieces in the AFTRS Masters Program. The film will be directed by Samuel Van Grinsven and shot on location in Sydney.

Statement by director Samuel Van Grinsven: Sequin In A Blue Room explores what it means to come of age in the modern queer world. The coming of age narrative has been a staple of queer cinema for decades. Year after year writers and filmmakers come back to these formative years of sexual and identity discovery. I know as a young gay boy, these stories were defining. I did however struggle to find my own experience reflected on screen. That of a digital age experience. Growing up, sexual discovery and the process of coming out have all changed in the digital world. Those who once felt alienated by being different can find their experiences reflected online creating a sense of community. And yet the physical, tangible queer community is more fractured than ever. Queer sex has changed, it has an immediacy, accessibility and openness like never before. And yet, this air of transgressive behaviour that surrounds it has lived on into the digital age. It’s this contradictory and complex modern queer experience that has drawn me to the story world of Sequin.

As a team we are a really excited about telling a queer story that exists inside the erotic thriller genre. Mainstream queer cinema has been stuck in a cycle of looking back, telling the stories that for so long it was unable to tell. These stories have leant themselves to typical genres like the biopic, historical drama or romance. It’s exciting for us to step out of that mold and show these characters and relationships outside a raw reflection of reality.

Working within the budgetary constraints of a micro-budget feature film is a huge challenge. Luckily Sophie has made a feature film with a budget of less than $5000, and Sam has made multiple shorts with budgets even smaller in the past. So both have experience budgeting and making small amounts of money go a long way. We have seed funding and production/equipment support from AFTRS, and the funds from this crowdfunding campaign are what we need to push the film to the next level. 

Sophie has worked out a very specific and well thought out budget and has received feedback from industry professionals to ensure it is the correct standard for the film we are making. The excel spreadsheets that we have are works of art in themselves. Here is a rough breakdown of where our crowdfunding budget will be going: 

Making a feature film is no easy task, and it is not something we would undertake if we didn’t feel we had the skills and experience to do so. This will be the second feature film for our producer Sophie, and Sam’s experience making multiple short films means theyare well equipped to handle any challenges and curveballs that come their way. The challenges that we will be facing moving forward include:

• Locations: We want to feature locations with queer historical significance. Sydney has been a hub for the LBGTQ+ rights movement for decades. We want to sit the film physically inside this history. This isn’t easy, nor is it cheap. Working with council permits, local organisations and private business owners requires all kinds of additional costs. Costs that with your support we can meet.
• Meeting deadlines: we need to deliver the final film by October this year. This is quite a tight turnaround and meeting this deadline will be a challenge. To ensure we do, we have drawn up a very detailed project schedule with all heads of post production fully aware of their deadlines so they can prepare to work to these. Also, as this an AFTRS graduate project, Sam and Jay and Tim literally can’t graduate if they don’t meet this deadline… so if that isn’t a motivating factor I don’t know what is.
• Working with LGBTQ+ Friendly people/businesses: Even though the majority of Australia voted ‘YES’, it is an unfortunate reality that discrimination still exists around us. This is a challenge we have already encountered and will continue to encounter. We have a very simple no tolerance policy for any discrimination or intolerance in our dealings with homeowners, business owners and cast and crew throughout the making of this film. We’re refusing to compromise on the content of our film, because we know how important it is to tell this story with honesty and integrity.

Feel free to email us to ask us questions, get more information, and become involved in the making of Sequin in a Blue Room 

[email protected] 

Want to see more?

http://www.sequininablueroom.com 

https://www.facebook.com/sequininablueroom/ 

https://www.instagram.com/sequininablueroom/